Palestinian Is Killed in Hebron as Police Disperse Protest Over Mideast Peace Talks

Wednesday

Nov 28, 2007 at 5:27 AM

In Gaza, which is controlled by the Islamic group Hamas, crowds estimated at more than 100,000 came out to protest the Annapolis meeting.

ISABEL KERSHNER

JERUSALEM, Nov. 27 — A Palestinian man was killed Tuesday in Hebron on the West Bank as Palestinian Authority police officers loyal to President Mahmoud Abbas fired weapons to disperse protests against the Middle East peace conference taking place in Annapolis, Md.

In Gaza, which is controlled by the Islamic group Hamas, crowds estimated at more than 100,000 came out to protest the Annapolis meeting.

The circumstances of the man’s death were not immediately clear, but medical workers said he had been shot in the chest, news media reported. The protesters and the police were also reported to have been throwing stones at each other.

A police spokesman in Hebron sent a statement to reporters denying that the police had killed the man, identified as Hisham al-Baradei, who was in his 30s.

The Hebron protest was one of several in the West Bank organized by Hizb ut-Tahrir — the Islamic Liberation Party — a small, unarmed, pan-Islamic group that seeks the return of the Caliphate and has become more active in the Palestinian territories.

The Palestinian Authority had announced a ban on demonstrations and news conferences during the Annapolis meeting, under a state of emergency it declared when Hamas took over Gaza after a factional war in June.

Hizb ut-Tahrir is independent of Hamas and criticized it for participating in Palestinian parliamentary elections in 2006.

In Ramallah, also in the West Bank, the police used batons and tear gas and fired into the air to hold back about 300 Islamic demonstrators at a city mosque. Dozens were arrested; some journalists were beaten and briefly detained. Earlier on Tuesday, police officers broke up a smaller demonstration by secularist groups.

Inter-Palestinian violence has mostly been confined to Gaza and is much rarer in the Palestinian cities of the West Bank, where the Palestinian Authority, dominated by Fatah, Mr. Abbas’s party, holds sway.

In early November, Hamas police officers in Gaza shot dead seven Fatah supporters when the police broke up a rally on the third anniversary of the death of the longtime Palestinian leader and Fatah founder, Yasir Arafat.

Baher Assaf, a Hizb ut-Tahrir spokesman, said that the Palestinian Authority police had “used brutal force” against marchers in the West Bank, including live ammunition, killing one and wounding “hundreds.”

Mr. Assaf called the Annapolis meeting, where Israeli and Palestinian leaders agreed to work toward a peace pact by the end of 2008, “a conspiracy against the Islamic nation.”

The Palestinian Authority minister for prisoner affairs, Ashraf al-Ajrami, told The Associated Press that there was a “plot to harm the standing” of the Abbas government while Mr. Abbas was in the world limelight. Mr. Ajrami said the government “must investigate the events surrounding” the killing of the protester.

Protesters aside, many Palestinians in Ramallah seemed apathetic about the conference. At the Palestine coffee shop downtown, the news channel Al Jazeera was on mute as customers played cards and listened to music on the radio. The proprietor, who referred to himself as Jamal, 48, said people were not interested “because there were so many conferences that led to nothing.”

A Hamas protester in Gaza, Asma al-Fayoumi, 17, said: “There is a division among Palestinians. There are those after food, life, those that are materialistic, like Abbas, and there are those like us who are seeking life after death.” The large turnout in Gaza pleased her. “There are those who still enjoy good conscience,” she said.

Early Tuesday, Israeli forces fatally shot a Palestinian man who had been approaching them in the southern Gaza Strip, an army spokeswoman said. He turned out to have been unarmed, she said. Hamas said three of its militants had been killed in two other clashes with Israeli forces in Gaza.

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